Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and broadminded, the other intolerant and narrow-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND BROADMINDED USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, et al reside in the other America!

Monday, September 11, 2006

Well, it looks as though the swiftboat assault on "nine-eleven" was carried out by Iger and the money grubbers at ABC. I must admit, I tried to watch it, but after the first few minutes or so, I couldn't take the fear of what brutalization awaited my senses. But I did tape it, maybe after sometime has passed and I witness the fallout from such a bastardly, erroneous, so called, work of art, I will be able to calmly watch and laugh at this piece of corn.

I was glad when I came across the first whiff of truth about it by Tom Shales, the TV critic. Thanks Tom, for putting to words, exactly what we, whovalue truth, feel. thinkingblue

Factually shaky, politically inflammatory andphotographically a mess, "The Path to 9/11" -- ABC'stwo-part, five-hour miniseries tracing events leading upto the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and thePentagon -- has something not just to offend everyonebut also to depress them.

The docudrama -- allegedly produced as a warning to theUnited States that the attacks, or something like them,could happen again -- falls clumsily into traps thatawait all those who make fictional films claiming to befactual. Except this time, the event being dramatized isone of the most tragic and monstrous in the nation'shistory, not something to be trifled with.

It is hardly surprising that the movie has been precededby cries of outrage from some of those depicted in it,especially members of the Clinton administration who areshown as, essentially, incompetent.

Even Harvey Keitel, who plays the nominal hero of thefilm -- former FBI agent-turned-World Trade Centersecurity chief John O'Neill -- when asked in aninterview whether he thought the film containeddistortions, replied, "Yes, I do," and called on thenetwork to fix them before the film airs.

CNN reported yesterday that former secretary of stateMadeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, national securityadviser to Bill Clinton (Albright and Berger are playedby actors in the movie), wrote to Thomas H. Kean,co-chairman of the 9/11 commission and a consultant onthe film, and urged him to use his influence to get ABCto withdraw the film (at press time, it was scheduled toair tomorrow night and Monday night). Albright andBerger say the film puts words in their mouths that theynever said and has them doing things they never did.

In a brief news clip yesterday, a smiling Clinton, askedby reporters to comment on the movie, said simply, "Ithink they ought to tell the truth" -- although defining"the truth" in this case can't be considered a simpletask.

Blunderingly, ABC executives cast doubt on their ownfilm's veracity when they made advance copies availableto such political conservatives as Rush Limbaugh but notto Democrats who reportedly requested the sametreatment. If it's any consolation to Democrats,however, the film at no point suggests that SaddamHussein -- whom President Bush has tried to associatewith the 9/11 attacks -- was involved in the planning orexecution of the attacks in any way.

According to the movie, Osama bin Laden -- now the mostwanted man in the world and a terrorist whose role inthe 9/11 atrocity is not in doubt -- was virtuallywithin the grasp of U.S. intelligence operatives twiceduring the '90s, after the 1993 attack on the WorldTrade Center. Islamic extremists left a truck bomb inthe center's underground parking garage -- hoping, thefilm says, that the blast would knock one tower off itsbase and into the other.

Weak-kneed bureaucrats declined to act upon theopportunities to seize or kill bin Laden, the film alsosays. But the docudrama doesn't stop at criticizinggeneric bureaucrats -- which would at least have helpedsustain a nonpartisan aura -- and aims arts specificallyand repeatedly at Albright, Berger, then-CIA chiefGeorge Tenet and others in the Clinton administration,most of them made to seem either shortsighted orspineless.

Clinton himself is libeled through abusive editing. Afirst-class U.S. operative played by Donnie Wahlbergargues the case for getting bin Laden while the al-Qaedaleader is openly in view in some sort of compound inAfghanistan. CIA officials haggle over minor details,such as the budget for the operation. The film'sdirector, David L. Cunningham, then cuts abruptly to aTV image of Clinton making his infamous "I did not havesexual relations with that woman" remark with regard toMonica Lewinsky. The impression given is that Clintonwas spending time on his sex life while terrorists weregaining ground and planning a nightmare.

It would have made as much sense, and perhaps more, tocut instead to stock footage of a smirking KennethStarr, the reckless Republican prosecutor largelyresponsible for distracting not just the president butthe entire nation with the scandal.

Looking even worse than Clinton is then-U.S. Ambassadorto Yemen Barbara K. Bodine. Her name is not prominentlyfeatured but her title is, and she comes across as afoolishly intransigent official who defends the binLaden name and insults FBI agents who visit her office,with O'Neill heading up the delegation. Patricia Heaton,who plays the role, makes Bodine seem especiallydespicable, a close-minded ignoramus who ironicallytells O'Neill, "You are the epitome of 'the UglyAmerican.' "

Meanwhile as the '90s and the film wear on, we seeal-Qaeda faithful training, spewing hatred and, withoutmuch trouble, sneaking into the United States and openlyenrolling in flight schools, where they learn how topilot airplanes. One of them, the very portrait of awild-eyed terrorist, is captured and his laptop computerseized by FBI agents. Incredibly, an official rules thatthe FBI cannot open the laptop and examine its contents,and it is presumably returned to the terrorist so he cancontinue his work.

In an attempt to layer a coat of visual veracity overthe film, it's shot in the style of some news footage --the hand-held camera jerking, bouncing, panning wildly.Faces are framed in absurdly intense close-up, sointense it's not always easy to tell whom you're lookingat. The gratuitous camera movement and the insistence onreducing people to eyes or noses or mouths becomeoppressive after only two hours, much less five. This isn't cinematography; it's vivisection. (The act or practice of cutting into or otherwise injuring living animals, especially for the purpose of scientific research.)

But aesthetic objections pale in comparison to thelegitimate complaints of those who resent the film'sbeing passed off as truth when it apparently is riddledwith errors. These are dismissed in a glib disclaimeracknowledging "composite and representative charactersand time compression . . . for dramatic purposes." Howmuch drama needs to be added to 9/11?

The film is prominently billed as being based on thereport of the 9/11 commission, but one must read thefine print: Also acknowledged, although far lessconspicuously in the credits, are three books on thesubject.

In a report on "NBC Nightly News" on Thursday, unnamedClinton administration officials were quoted as sayingthat some scenes in the film are "pure fiction." Purefiction doesn't mix well with fact. Executive producerMarc Platt's quoted defense: It was "not our intentionto distort." Whatever the intention -- and Democratshave a right to be suspicious of any product of theconservative-minded Walt Disney Co., which produced thefilm and owns ABC -- distortion unfortunately seems tohave been the outcome.

"The Path to 9/11" appears intent on meting outpunishment, not only to some of those portrayed in itbut also to viewers who try to make it through the wholegrueling assault -- an assault on the senses that may also be an assault onthe truth.

About Me

Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and
free-thinking, the other intolerant and close-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND FREE-THINKING USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh et al reside in the intolerant America!